Rotatable tools having hardened cutting tips are used on road planing machines, excavating machines, and the like. A typical road planing machine may receive several hundred tools all of which must be replaced at least once a day while the machine is in use. As a result, a great number of rotatable tools are used by such machines. Accordingly, there is a demand for rotatable tools that have an extendable useful life and that are easily replaced into the tool holders of the machine. In my patent application Ser. No. 10/952,158, I disclosed a rotatable tool having a non-rotatable wear washer. The tool disclosed in this application has a metal body with a tapered forward cutting end and a cylindrical shank extending axially rearward of the forward cutting end. Fitted around the shank is a sleeve having a longitudinal slot therein so as to be compressible. The tool also includes a wear washer having a central opening that is fitted around the shank of the tool in the forward end of the sleeve. A projection extends radially inwardly of the central opening and engages surfaces of the sleeve so as to prevent the wear washer from rotation with the tool body once the tool is mounted into the tool holder of the machine.
An important part of the tool disclosed in my patent application Ser. No. 10/952,158 is that the tool is sold with the wear washer positioned around the central portion of the compressible sleeve with the inwardly directed projection compressing the sleeve into a diameter less than the inner diameter of the bore of the tool holder into which the shank of the tool is to be fitted. With the sleeve compressed around the shank, the distal end of the tool is easily inserted into the bore of the tool holder thereby greatly facilitating the insertion of a replacement tool. To operate properly, the wear ring must be assembled around the sleeve of the tool with the inwardly directed tab positioned across the parallel edges of the elongate slot in the sleeve.
The tool disclosed in my patent application Ser. No. 10/952,158 greatly reduces the difficulty of inserting a replacement tool into a tool holder, and therefore there is a great need for the tool disclosed in this application. It is necessary, therefore, to provide a machine that will assemble the parts of the tool with the parts properly aligned so that the sleeve can be compressed with the wear washer wrapped around the central portion thereof and the tab of the wear washer aligned across the parallel ends of the sleeve.